<h3>blank_mbr</h3>

<h4>Main Project Page</h4>
<p><a
href="http://code.google.com/p/antlinux/">http://code.google.com/p/antlinux/</a>

<h4>What is this?</h4>
<p>Looking for a quick way to nuke a partition table from a machine?  You've
found one here!</p>

<h4>What's available?</h4>

<ul>
<li><em>vmlinuz-X.X.XX</em> and <em>initramfs-blank-mbr-X.X.XX.DATE.cpio.gz</em>, the kernel and initramfs image; can be used to PXEboot or with SYSLINUX for USB flash drives</li>
<li>blank-mbr.DATE.tar - a tarball containing the kernel and initramfs images;</li>
<li>blank-mbr.DATE.zip - a zip file containing the kernel and initramfs images;</li>
<li>blank-mbr.DATE.iso - an ISO image you burn with CD writing software</li>
</ul>

<p>Download the tarball <strong>or</strong> the zipfile <strong>or</strong>
the ISO image <strong>or</strong> the <em>vmlinuz</em> and
<em>initramfs-blank-mbr</em> files, or download them all!

<h4>Usage</h4>

<p>Burn the ISO or create a bootable USB flash drive with syslinux, then use
the <em>vmlinuz</em> Linux kernel and <em>initramfs</em> image to boot up the
system, specifiying a drive to blank the master boot record on.  Example
syslinux/isolinux command line:

<p><code>blank blankdev=/dev/some/device</code>

<p>If you really want to get tricky, you can disable confirmation of the blanking with:

<p><code>blank blankdev=/dev/some/device confirm=n</code>

<p>Remember kids, this ISO/initramfs image will wipe the first 20M of the
drive (using the command listed at [1]), so if you have data on there that you
wanted to save, good luck getting it back!  

<p>Actually, getting your data back should be pretty easy, but it will just
take a while, you would have to recreate the partition table, or send the disk
out to a recovery service and have them fetch the data for you.

<h3>Enjoy!</h3>

<p>Complaint department?  <a href="mailto:elspicyjack at gmail dot
com">Clickie here</a>

<p>[1] <code>dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/to/wipe bs=1024 count=20000</code>
